Easter is a time when Christians remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the story…
Significance of Easter
The story of the crucifixion and resurrection is so significant that it’s told in all 4 gospel accounts within the New Testament. In fact our whole calendar revolves around Easter, as do school holidays and subsequently very often family holidays. There are two bank holidays for it on Good Friday and Easter Monday. The shops stock chocolate eggs and promoting is filled with references to Easter. Whether you might be a Christian or not you may’t miss Easter, and over time the festival has attracted various folk traditions.
The word ‘Easter’
The origin of the word Easter is debated. The Venerable Bede (673-735 AD) was fascinated by the dating of Easter, and he postulated that the word derived from an Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre. However he’s the one source for this concept, and there is no such thing as a other mention of this goddess in material which doesn’t derive directly or not directly from Bede.
Bede is often relied upon as an accurate source, but some scholars think that this goddess didn’t exist. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says “There is now widespread consensus that…” a Germanic source word led to the English word Easter, via Anglo-Saxon, which also led to the German word for Easter, which is Ostern.
It is assumed to come back from the word for dawn, which was related to the word for east, since the sun rises at dawn within the east. Eostur-monaþ (Easter month) was the Anglo-Saxon name of the month which we now called April. So the festival of Easter could be named after the month it normally fell in.
Some people say that we must always not use the word ‘Easter’ because it could check with a pagan deity, but then so do all of the days of our week, that are mainly named after Anglo-Saxon deities. The months January and March are named after Roman gods, and the months July and August are named after deified Roman Emperors. If we stopped using words because within the distant past it may perhaps have an etymology derived from a pagan deity, which now we have forgotten about and now not honour nor consider in, then that might invalidate just about all our calendars and diaries, and most church notice boards. Today the truth is that the word Easter is related to a Christian festival, even whether it is linked to many non-Christian or quasi-Christin folk traditions like painted eggs.
The word Easter within the Bible
Some people argue that Christians mustn’t use the word Easter since it will not be present in the Bible, but then the word Bible will not be within the Bible either. Yet many individuals miss that the word Easter is within the Bible, albeit some old versions. It was utilized in William Tyndale’s New Testament, and is definitely still present in one quite common translation of the English Bible. The venerable Authorised or King James Version (KJV) uses the word Easter in only one verse in Acts 12:4. Early editions of the King James Version also included a table for locating the date of Easter. The Church of England clearly had no objection to the usage of the word Easter.
Easter and Passover
Acts 12:4 within the KJV reads “And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to 4 quaternions of soldiers to maintain him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.” How the word Easter got there could be very interesting. The King James Version was not a recent translation, but a revision of existing texts, largely stemming back to the work of William Tyndale, who used the word Easter. In the New Testament William Tyndale selected to translate the Greek Πάσχα (Pascha) as Easter. He did it not only in Acts 12:4, but in all 29 places where it was utilized in the New Testament.
In the technique of revision the Bible Committees chargeable for the Authorized Version modified all the opposite references of Easter to Passover. There are theories, but whether or not they missed this one, or had some logic for retaining it will not be clear. Defenders of the King James Version sometimes go to quite contorted arguments to justify its use on this verse, but it surely may simply be only a left-over from Tyndale which was missed. No modern Bible translation in English uses the word Easter. Instead, all of the major modern English Bible translations, including the so-called New King James Version, translate Πάσχα (Pascha) as Passover.
Pascha
Pascha will not be really a Greek word, it was the best way of claiming and writing the Aramaic פָּסחָא (Pascha) equivalent of the Hebrew word פֶּסַח (Pesach) in Greek letters. This is what gives the word for Easter in most European languages. For example in Latin Pascha, in French Pâques, in Spanish Pascua, in Portuguese Páscoa, in Italian Pasqua, in Russian Пасха, and in Welsh Pasg. In English, the word is present in the term “paschal lamb”.
The major reason William Tyndale didn’t use the word “Passover” is just because that word didn’t exist in English then. Another reason perhaps that Martin Luther did the equivalent in German, and Tyndale was conversant in German and Luther’s work. However, after completing his New Testament in 1526, Tyndale then began to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew. His Penteteuch was published in January 1530, when the 12 months began in March, so this might now be reckoned as 1531, written by convention as 1530/1. When Tyndale got here to the Hebrew פֶּסַח (Pesach) he took the basis of the Hebrew word which suggests to “omit”, and he used it to coin the English word ‘Passover’, which was then printed as “passeouer”, when u and v were used interchangably.
The term Passover was readily adopted. It is today the word used for the festival by Jews and Christians alike. So now, all modern translations of the New Testament use the word Passover, which Tyndale coined, as an alternative of the word Easter, but it surely remains to be in a single verse within the KJV.
When is Easter?
The controversy over which date to make use of for Easter began within the Early Church within the 2nd century AD. The original date of the crucifixion and resurrection followed the Jewish Passover, with the dating outlined in Leviticus 23. As the Church became less Jewish and more Gentile, they didn’t follow nor know the Jewish calendar. Passover was not on a hard and fast day of the week but Christians desired to mark the resurrection on the “first day of the week” (Luke 24:1-6) i.e. Sunday. Discussion and disagreement over the very best approach to computing the date of Easter Sunday has been ongoing ever since and stays unresolved. So even today not all Christians mark Easter at the identical time.
The Early Church, and Messianic Jews, remembered it in accordance with the Jewish calendar. Christians who follow the Orthodox tradition, and Christians who follow the Catholic and Protestant tradition, mark Easter Sunday on different days calculated by different ancient formulations. Even so, some years it is similar. Easter Sunday was the identical for eastern and western Christians in 2010 and 2011, 2014 and 2017. There have been attempts to create a typical Easter Sunday for each 12 months, but these haven’t worked thus far. Maybe they are going to at some point in the long run. Meanwhile in 2024, the western Easter Sunday is 31 March, and the Orthodox Easter Sunday is 5 May.
Easter Services
Most churches hold a special service on Easter Sunday. It is a time like Christmas, or Harvest Festivals, when churches are sometimes a bit fuller, when some individuals who won’t normally go to church feel the necessity to attend. Some places also hold a special, often ecumenical, dawn service at 6am on Easter Monday to make the time when Jesus’s tomb was found empty (Matthew 28:1), with a view to have a good time the resurrection.
Whatever you call it and every time you have a good time it, that will not be the difficulty. What matters is that at the moment of 12 months, Christians recall that Jesus rose from the dead.
